What constitutes a successful draft? A team will draft 40+ players, if one player becomes a superstar, is that a good draft? If several players get into the show, albeit at with minimal to modest success, was it a good draft? Here's a useful link to look for yourself.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/index.cgi?franch_ID=CHW&year_ID=1966&draft_type=junreg

My first immpression, without much analysis, is that a team drafted and developed well if it can produce one major leaguer with 1500 at bats, or 100 appearances over a career, every year. Easier said than done.

goldglovesox

08-05-2007, 08:48 AM

Actually in my opinion a good draft depends on where you are drafting sometimes. There are few "impact" players that you will get a shot at late in the draft (20th on.) Obviously some will slip due to signability but in general you will not often find an impact guy that late in the first round. Now drafting early , depending on the depth of the draft class you will have a shot to get an impact player. If you land that one impact player then the draft was successful.

But in general I think a good draft is when you get 1 everyday player or 1 quality arm out of the draft. That does not necessarily mean they have to play in your uniform but if they turn out to be contributing big leaguers then you had a successful draft. (See Chris Young 2001) Just my opinion because anyone you draft after the 6th round you are really hoping they will be a quality utility guy in the big leagues for a position player. Pitchers a back of the rotation starter or bullpen guy. If they turn out to be more great but that's part of the gamble.

UserNameBlank

08-05-2007, 09:16 AM

A good draft to me is:

1. Taking the best available players in the earliest rounds. Generally going with potential over projectability and staying away from the "safe" picks.

2. Making the right decisions with the players you do draft (the biggest one). The Sox have had some pretty good drafts in recent years considering what they were able to do with those players.

The Sox normally trade their prospects for proven players and generally make the right decisions. The only player that looks like he might come back to bite us is Chris Young, although Chris Young did get us the guy who, at least in terms of stuff, is the ace of our pitching staff. Certainly the trade was good for both teams and it's not like the Sox "lost" in that deal. In fact, with the contract Javy has now, if the Sox moved him over the offseason he'd most likely command a package even greater than the one we gave up to get him.

As far as drafting players who make impacts in the major leagues, we don't do that really well but we're not terrible at that either. The Twins and Royals are worse in our own division, despite the fact that both teams have had very high picks over recent years. I haved looked a lot at Cleveland or Detroit, but I'd say overall Detroit has done a much better job in recent years than we have, which of course partly has to do with their draft position.

Overall we don't really do a bad job though. We just typically have our most success with RP and OF. In our current system, we have mainly starting pitching ready, which simply means we have to deal that either at the Major League or minor league level in order to fill positions. Right now, we have four pitchers (Gio, Egbert, McCulloch, Broadway) who could all be #4/#5 starters in the big leagues on a decent team and maybe even as soon as right now, two more (Phillips, Heager) who could eat innings as No. 5's in some ****hole, and one guy (De Los Santos) who has staff ace potential, albeit in low A. Then we have a couple of projects (Masset, Sisco) still with pretty high ceilings although probably unlikely to have much success. Overall, I'd say we're not that bad. One big offseason trade that fills two positions on the field, say a RF and a SS, and opens a hole at SP that we can fill internally, and all of the sudden we're a contender again.

WSox4life

08-06-2007, 02:38 PM

Since it is such a crapshoot I think a team should take more risks, and definately not depend or bank on draft picks. Success measured by player impact in the big leagues. For those drafting, player expectations vs what they really do, so obviously it takes time.

rdivaldi

08-06-2007, 03:17 PM

It's tough to qualify what makes each draft successful. You could go by sheer number of players that actually reach the majors, how many all-stars there were or even look at trades made possible by players you drafted.

The thing I always look for first is the amount of players that actually make it to the big leagues. If that number is relatively high like 9 or 10 there's a good chance that you've gotten someone productive. But if that number slips to 4 or 5, odds are it was a bad draft.

Of course there are exceptions, like the 1989 draft which only produced 4 guys that reached the bigs but one of the guys was named Frank Thomas. The 1991 draft produced 9 guys that made the bigs, but Mike Cameron was the only player of consequence.

UserNameBlank

08-06-2007, 06:04 PM

It's tough to qualify what makes each draft successful. You could go by sheer number of players that actually reach the majors, how many all-stars there were or even look at trades made possible by players you drafted.

The thing I always look for first is the amount of players that actually make it to the big leagues. If that number is relatively high like 9 or 10 there's a good chance that you've gotten someone productive. But if that number slips to 4 or 5, odds are it was a bad draft.

Of course there are exceptions, like the 1989 draft which only produced 4 guys that reached the bigs but one of the guys was named Frank Thomas. The 1991 draft produced 9 guys that made the bigs, but Mike Cameron was the only player of consequence.
The number that make it to the big leagues usually depends on the state of the team, not the quality of the player. Losing teams with gaping holes everywhere call up a lot more players, and even winning teams often call up guys who normally wouldn't be up because of injury. Also, even if some of these guys do stick around, a lot of them end up as stopgaps and/or somewhat useful starters that are mainly role-players. The thing is though, major league caliber stopgaps and role players who have already proven themselves can usually be had for just about nothing, so developing a young player that can fill such a role is only good for saving a team maybe a million or two in payroll in a given year. But then again when you factor in the cost of developing these players, how much money is actually saved overall?

Edit: Just as an example, take Rob Mackowiak who we dumped vs. Andy Gonzalez who will probably step in as the UT guy over the next year plus. Take what the Sox are paying Andy Gonzalez and what it cost to develop him, and then weigh that against what Mackowiak costs. Then ask, is the downgrade from Mackowiak to Gonzalez even worth whatever savings is left? Did developing Andy Gonzalez mean we had a better draft the year we got him? Does Andy Gonzalez's presence here actually mean something positive longterm? I think if the Sox traded him for a better major league player, it would be a good thing we drafted and developed him. But as it is, it's kind of like "meh" because we're not really gaining anything overall by having him here.